I have been using TwonkyMediaServer for my audio streaming needs for some time now, and it works great.

However, I also have a Netgear EVA9100 and I'd like to use Twonky to get around one big issue with this media player: it does not support DTS downmixing (only passthrough). My intention is to use TMS to do realtime downmixing of DTS to PCM or another format supported by my player, such as an stereo MPEG audio stream.

One major problem is: how do I get the Netgear to see TMS? It supports both PlayOn and WMP as UPNP server, but I haven't been able to make it see TMS. In the TMS clients configuration, I've tried presenting itself using the different Netgear options, as well as WMP, but to no avail.

If the EVA can see PlayOn and WMP, there surely is a way for TMS to show up too on the Netgear?

hmm only audio and pictures are picked up by the EVA9100 from a WMP12 server too.

I've been under the impression that PlayOn can make video appear on the EVA9100&9150. I'll try to confirm and do some packet sniffing to find out if it uses UPNP for this. Maybe the video needs to be DRM protected before the EVA picks it up.

FrankL wrote:After further testing I've concluded that only PlayOn is allowed to serve video to the EVA91x0 devices. Is there a way to force masking TMS as a PlayOn server?

To answer my own question: yes there is. I've created a file named devicedescription-playon.xml in the resources subdirectory of TMS (this is on TMS v5.1.4), based on devicedescription-dlna-1-0.xml with the following contents:

After restarting TMS and selecting the Netgear Digital Entertainer profile for the EVA91x0, you can now see the complete contents (audio, video and images) served by TMS to the EVA91x0. To do this, you need to go to the 'internet media/PlayOn (BETA)' menu entry on the EVA (this is because PlayOn is handled differently than media on WMP UPNP or network shares on the EVA91x0).

There's quite a bit of work remaining for proper support though. For example, not all videos play (videos with H264 fail to play completely, MPEG2 in VOB produce 'insufficient network performance' errors). More on that later perhaps...

Wow you've done a lot of work on this. I think our Berlin office is going to try and get a hold of one of these devices. If they do that, they might be able to create a device profile for it and that could help.

I've copied them on all of your findings. Thanks for your help on this.

To make the EVA detect TMS, the only thing it looks at in the devicedescription is the presence of 'PlayOn' in the friendlyName. Anything else can be left at TMS' defaults. I've now set it to the following:

However, I get the following error on the EVA9100 when trying to play back 'big' .mp4 files:Unable to play this media directly from the Internet. Download the media into one of your shares or enable hard disk buffering. Press OK to continue.

Small mp4 files (e.g. music videos or video trailers) work fine though. Maybe it's not related to file size / time but a muxing problem, but I haven't looked too much into that yet. All .ts and .mkv files play back fine regardless of the size.

I intend to do further fiddling with this. Would it help if I am in direct contact with the Berlin people?

With a question for the tech support of TMS:
This is is a narrower selection than the DD:Digital Entertainer in the NA:Netgear Digital Entertainer section, to which the EVA9000 series also match. How can I exclude the 9000 series from matching the existing NA:Netgear Digital Entertainer section? I suppose there are a few devices (EVA700, EVA2000, EVA8000) for which maybe the existing profile is better suited.

Question number 2:
I'd like to prevent .ogg and .mov files from being presented to the EVA9000 series. It doesn't support the VORBIS audio codec, and .mov files often contain old video codecs such as ones by Sorensen, and also are not supported by the EVA9000 series (with AVC/AAC ones easily being renamed to .mp4). I've added the following code to clients.db (as per its header)

I figured out if you put the client profile for 'Digital Entertainer Elite' before the existing one for 'Digital Entertainer', it will cause TMS to apply the proper client profile.

I've also been playing with YouTube support in the mediafusion plugin, and resultantly have a new question number 1 for the TMS developers. Basically the following situation describes my question
- I need (and therefore use) "MT:mp4 video/mpeg" in clients.db to get the EVA9000 series to play back mp4 containers
- playback of indexed .mp4 files works fine this way, with a client request like this

Sorry it took so long, but I finally was given some answers to your questions:

Q1.This is is a narrower selection than the DD:Digital Entertainer in the NA:Netgear Digital Entertainer section, to which the EVA9000 series also match. How can I exclude the 9000 series from matching the existing NA:Netgear Digital Entertainer section? I suppose there are a few devices (EVA700, EVA2000, EVA8000) for which maybe the existing profile is better suited.

The entry for Netgear EVA91x0 devices needs to be before the entry for other Netgear devices

Q2. I'd like to prevent .ogg and .mov files from being presented to the EVA9000 series. It doesn't support the VORBIS audio codec, and .mov files often contain old video codecs such as ones by Sorensen, and also are not supported by the EVA9000 series (with AVC/AAC ones easily being renamed to .mp4). I've added the following code to clients.db (as per its header)
MT:ogg,mov not-supported

However, .mov and .ogg files keep showing up on my EVA9100. Am I making a mistake in my syntax ?

This is the correct setting but even setting this the content item will still be shared. Only the corresponding resource element is suppressed (you can think of it like the URL corresponding to the ogg content is hidden.)

Regarding incorporating these discoveries into Twonky... Most changes like this are only going into Twonky 7.0. We're going to be releasing a special version of Twonky 7 to forum users which doesn't require any log-in. I don't have a date for that however.

I received another answer for question number 2 as well. Posting it here in case it helps anyone.

I think the MT option to set a mime type to "not-supported" will not remove the item from the tree for that client. It is just replacing the mime type with something that does not indicate a media item.

As far as I know we do not have an option to suppress items on a per client basis.

We decided it would be good to have a solution for the new Digital Entertainers from Netgear. One of our engineers did the following:

1. Added the " Netgear Digital Entertainer 9000 Series" profile to TwonkyServer 6.0 and 7.0 as a new client, with all the changes suggested by Frank. He used our Mapping Update Policy (used to be DB:FIX) to make sure the correct device is matched and selected.

2. He also improved and added the devicedescription-playon.xml to the resources folder for 6.0 and 7.0.

This fix will appear in TwonkyServer 7.1. It MAY also appear in TwonkyServer 6.0.40 or 7.0.5.

Although the work on this has not been finished, I've attached a new clients.db file and the updated devicedescription-play-on.xml file, that might help some of you until TwonkyServer 7.1 is released.

- Rick

Special thanks to FT and GP for working on this! To check status on this issue, ask me about TMCORE-5075.

Thank you for looking into this! I am sure, a lot of people are very excited.
However, as I understand, all the above pertains to TMS installed on a computer. I have a WD MyBookWorld NAS with TMS pre-installed. How do I do the upgrade, or update the clients.db file?

Sadly, some NAS manufacturers do not display the server settings pages which make things like this possible. I think there could be a way to do this manually, but I do not have instructions. If no one comes forward, the only option is to wait for your manufacturer to make an update available for you. We normally share updates like this after they are fully tested, but sometimes it takes manufacturers a while to release these to the public.